Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/286

 place in Ethiopia, after the king, and governor of Gojam, one of the largest and richest provinces in Abyssinia. But he soon after again forsook Jacob, swore allegiance to Socinios, and joined him.

content with all this, he began to form some new designs while with the court at Coga; and, having said to some of the king's servants, over wine, that it was prophesied to him he should kill three kings, which he had verified in two, and was waiting for the third, this speech was repeated to Socinios, who ordered Za Selasse to be apprehended; and, though he most justly deserved death, the king mercifully commuted his punishment to banishment to the top of Ourec Amba, which signifies the Great Mountain upon the high ridge, called Gusman, near the banks of the Nile; and, though close confined in the caves on the top of that mountain, after a year's imprisonment he escaped to Walaka, and there declared himself captain of a band of robbers, with which he infested the province of Gojam, when he was slain by a peasant, and his head cut off and sent to Socinios, who very much rejoiced in the present, and disposed of it as we have mentioned.

second piece of intelligence the emperor received was that in the mountains of Habab, contiguous to Masuah, where is the famous monastery of the monks of St Eustathius, called Bisan; a person appeared calling himself Jacob, son of Sertza Denghel, and pretending to have escaped from the battle of Lebart; thus, taking advantage of the circumstance of Jacob's body not having been found in the field among the dead after that engagement, he pretended he had been so grievously wounded in the teeth and face that it was